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Octopus Energy Group Limited
Octopus Energy is a UK-based energy supplier and technology company that sells electricity and gas to homes and businesses and licenses its customer-service software to other energy companies.
Octopus Energy is one of Britain's biggest household energy suppliers, selling electricity and gas to millions of homes. It made its name by treating energy bills as a service problem rather than a commodity: simple tariffs, no confusing exit fees, and a customer support operation that actually answers. The company was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in London.
What really sets Octopus apart is its software. It built a platform called Kraken that runs billing, customer accounts, and meter data, and it licenses that platform to other utilities around the world. So Octopus earns money two ways: from the margin between what it pays for power and what customers pay it, and from selling its software to other energy companies. It is not a publicly listed company, so there is no stock ticker — it is privately held, with major backing from investors including Alphabet's venture arm and the Canadian pension fund CDPQ. The energy-supply side is a low-margin, tough business. When wholesale gas prices spiked in 2022, dozens of small UK suppliers went bust. Octopus survived and even grew by taking on customers from failed rivals, becoming one of the largest suppliers in the country. But supply alone would be a commodity grind — the Kraken software is the higher-quality part of the business, and licensing it worldwide is the growth engine.
Octopus has also pushed into heat pumps, electric vehicle charging, and renewable generation, betting that the real money is in managing how homes use and produce power. Its scale and software give it an edge most traditional utilities lack, but the core supply business remains vulnerable to wholesale price swings and tight UK retail margins.
Saved answer · last researched 10 Nov 2026